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Gon, vol. 1

Tanaka’s feisty little T-Rex is back. DC Comics had released Gon in the 90s, but the title never quite took off. Now they’re re-releasing it, in the proper order and unflipped, for a new generation of comics readers. If you didn’t catch Gon’s adventures before, then you need to hop on-board your nearest lion and rush through the savanna to get yourself a copy.

The first think you’ll notice is that Tanaka’s art is amazingly lifelike. Each animal looks like it could have stepped out from the pages of an encyclopedia. He uses a lot of shading and cross-hatching to create his drawings, but instead of being dark, they seem to gain detail the longer you look at them. CMX has done a careful job of reproducing the images, which helps. Then you’ll realize that there is no dialogue or text. Gon, like Owly and others, is a wordless comic, but don’t take that to mean that it’s for kids. The humor in Gon ranges from subtle to overt and there is some violence (some slapstick, some more realistic), to be expected in a story about a dinosaur. Though the story is in no way realistic, and doesn’t try to be, the animals do mostly act like animals, hunting for food, fighting for territory, etc.

Gon is an excellent choice for fans of Age of Reptiles, but it will also appeal to fans of shows like the Simpsons or to readers of Yotsuba&! and other humor titles.